WagnerDoctor Faustus' student and servant: "Alas, poor slave! See how poverty jests in his nakedness. I know the villian's out of service, and so hungry that I know he would give his soul to the devil for a shoulder of mutton, though it were blood raw."Robina clown: "Not so, neither! I had need to have it well roasted, and good sauce to it, if I pay so dear, I can tell you."
from Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe.
Also from the same play: "I charge thee to return and change thy shape,
Thou art too ugly to attend on me. Go, and return an old Franciscan friar."

"...he was so horribly unhuman, that one shuddered to think that tender women and fair children must, of necessity, confess to fellowship of kind with such a monster."
"For the term of his natural life" by Marcus Clarke

"...a make believe conversation about a fake book by some popular fraud."
Humbert Humbert "lolita" by Vladimir Nabrokov

"...however she was a woman and I'd have more luck conjuring up the thoughts of a chinaman than I would figuring out what she was conspiring." from "The true history of the Kelly gang". Winner of the 2001 Booker Prize.